How it works
The evaluator answers one question: is this a real problem worth solving, and am I the right person to solve it? You score 28 criteria once. The site then views those scores from several angles.
The tool is organised as a three-phase journey. Work through it in order. Each phase shows a progress bar, and the Next → button at the bottom of every step takes you to the following one.
| Phase | Question | Steps |
|---|---|---|
| ① Validate the idea | Is this a real problem, in a market worth entering? | Scorecard · TAM/SAM/SOM · Five Forces · 3C |
| ② Design value & business model | Who is it for, what value do you create, how does the business work? | Personas · Value Proposition Canvas · Business Model Canvas |
| ③ Craft the offer | How do you package it so people feel stupid saying no? | Starving crowd · Value equation · Problems → solutions · Delivery · Trim & stack · Enhance · Your offer |
Don't polish an offer (phase 3) for an idea that failed validation (phase 1). The offer page warns you when the phase 1 verdict is weak.
1. Score from evidence, not optimism
Each criterion is scored 1 to 5, and 5 is always the favourable end. For "operational complexity", 5 means simple to run. For "customer acquisition cost", 5 means cheap to acquire.
| Score | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 | Very weak. Evidence points against the idea. |
| 2 | Weak |
| 3 | Uncertain or average. You lean one way but cannot prove it. |
| 4 | Strong |
| 5 | Very strong. You have evidence: interviews, data, payments. |
| ? | Unknown. Leave it unscored rather than guessing. |
Tick evidence next to a score when it is backed by something real: customer interviews, data, a pre-sale or a working prototype. The Evidence-backed % meter shows how much of your evaluation is fact rather than hunch.
An honest "?" is more useful than an optimistic 4. Unknowns are not counted in any average, and they feed the Validate next list.
2. Section scores and the overall score
- Section score: the average of the scored criteria in that section (A–E).
- Overall score: the average of the section scores. Each of the five areas counts equally, however many criteria it has.
- Coverage: how many of the 28 criteria you have scored.
3. Perspective lenses
The same scores are re-weighted to answer the question each stakeholder cares about. A lens score is a weighted average of the scored criteria it uses. Unscored items are skipped, and the lens shows how much of its weight is covered.
| Lens | The question it asks |
|---|---|
| 👤 Customer | Would I urgently want this, and is it clearly better than what I do today? |
| 💰 Investor | Is the market big enough, are the unit economics sound, and can it become large and defensible? |
| 🛠️ Founder / Operator | Can I build, sell and run this myself with the time, skills and cash I actually have? |
| ⚔️ Competitor / Market | If incumbents and copycats respond, does this still win and hold its position? |
Weights (● = 1, ●● = 2, ●●● = 3; ★ = critical criterion):
| Criterion | 👤 Customer | 💰 Investor | 🛠️ Founder / Operator | ⚔️ Competitor / Market |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Problem quality | ||||
| Problem severity ★ | ●●● | |||
| Problem frequency | ●● | |||
| Cost of inaction | ●● | |||
| Existing solutions | ●● | ● | ||
| Urgency | ●●● | |||
| B. Market and customer | ||||
| Ideal customer profile (ICP) | ● | |||
| Market size | ●●● | |||
| Customer access ★ | ●● | |||
| Willingness to pay ★ | ● | ●● | ||
| Buying authority | ||||
| C. Solution and differentiation | ||||
| Value proposition | ●●● | |||
| Competitive alternatives | ● | ●●● | ||
| Differentiation | ●● | ●●● | ||
| Switching costs | ●● | |||
| Defensibility | ●●● | ●●● | ||
| D. Business model and economics | ||||
| Revenue model | ● | |||
| Pricing power | ●● | |||
| Gross margin | ●● | |||
| Customer acquisition cost | ●● | |||
| Customer lifetime value | ●●● | |||
| Cash flow and capital | ● | ●● | ||
| E. Execution and risk | ||||
| Founder-market fit | ●●● | |||
| Technical feasibility ★ | ●●● | |||
| Distribution strategy ★ | ● | ●●● | ||
| Time to validation | ●● | |||
| Operational complexity | ●● | |||
| Regulatory and platform risk | ●● | |||
| Timing | ●● | ● | ||
A big gap between lenses is the most useful signal. An idea customers love but investors score low is often a great lifestyle business and a poor venture bet. The reverse means a big market you haven't yet proven anyone wants.
4. Verdict
A verdict appears once at least 5 criteria are scored.
| Overall | Verdict |
|---|---|
| ≥ 4.0 | Strong: pursue it |
| 3.3 – 3.9 | Promising: validate the risks |
| 2.5 – 3.2 | Weak: rework the idea |
| < 2.5 | Rethink or drop it |
Knockouts
Five criteria are marked critical: problem severity, customer access, willingness to pay, technical feasibility and distribution strategy. A single one scored ≤ 2 caps the verdict at Weak, whatever the average. A great product nobody pays for, or one you cannot reach customers for, does not average out.
The verdict is marked provisional when fewer than 60% of criteria are scored. A warning also appears when fewer than 40% of scores are evidence-backed.
5. Red flags and "Validate next"
- Red flags: every criterion scored 1 or 2, worst first.
- Validate next: up to six cheap experiments, ordered as follows:
- critical criteria scored low
- critical criteria still unknown
- other unknowns
- scores of 3 without evidence
Each comes with a concrete test, such as pre-selling for willingness to pay or a two-week spike for technical feasibility.
6. Market size: TAM · SAM · SOM
| Layer | Meaning |
|---|---|
| TAM: total addressable market | Everyone who could ever buy this. |
| SAM: serviceable available market | The part your product, geography and channels can actually serve. |
| SOM: serviceable obtainable market | What you can realistically win in 3–5 years. |
- Bottom-up (recommended): TAM = number of potential customers × annual revenue per customer. SAM is a % of TAM, and SOM is a % of SAM.
- Top-down: type in the three values from reports. Add a price if you want them converted into customer counts.
- Set a revenue goal and the tool checks it against your SOM:
| SOM ÷ goal | Suggested Market size score |
|---|---|
| ≥ 3× | 5 |
| ≥ 1.5× | 4 |
| ≥ 1× | 3 |
| ≥ 0.5× | 2 |
| below 0.5× | 1 |
One click applies the suggestion to the scorecard.
The chart draws nested circles whose areas are proportional to the values. A log-scale bar chart sits beside it so a tiny SOM stays readable.
7. Porter's Five Forces
Michael Porter's model asks how attractive the industry is, separately from your product. Rate each force by intensity: 1 = weak (good for you), 5 = strong (squeezes profits).
| Force | Strong when… |
|---|---|
| ⚔️ Competitive rivalry | many similar players, slow growth, little differentiation |
| 🚪 Threat of new entrants | it is cheap to start and there are no network effects, brand or regulation barriers |
| 🧑💼 Buyer power | customers are few, price-sensitive, or can switch or build it themselves |
| 🏭 Supplier power | you depend on one platform, API or marketplace |
| 🔄 Threat of substitutes | manual work, spreadsheets or "do nothing" are good enough |
- Industry attractiveness = average of (6 − intensity), on the same 1–5 scale as everything else.
- The scorecard suggests an intensity for each force from related criteria. For example, rivalry is suggested from competitive alternatives and differentiation. One click fills any unrated forces.
8. 3C model
Kenichi Ohmae's 3C model says a strategy lives where three things overlap: Customers (what they need), Company (what you do well) and Competitors (where they fall short).
Each C gets a score from the related scorecard criteria, plus your own written analysis:
- Customers: severity, frequency, urgency, ICP, market size, access, willingness to pay.
- Company: founder-market fit, feasibility, distribution, validation speed, operations, margin, cash.
- Competitors: alternatives, differentiation, defensibility, switching costs. A high score here means your competitive position is strong.
The overlap is only as strong as the weakest circle.
9. User personas
A persona is a realistic profile of one key customer type. Build it from interviews, not imagination.
- Profile:
- basics: name, role, age, location, budget
- a real quote from an interview
- background
- role in the purchase (user, buyer, decision maker, influencer, gatekeeper)
- Lists: goals, frustrations, jobs to be done, tools and behaviours, where to reach them.
- Behaviour sliders:
- price-sensitive ↔ value-focused
- late ↔ early adopter
- do-it-yourself ↔ done-for-you
- tech-savviness
- risk appetite
- Evidence: record how many interviews the persona is based on. With zero, it is flagged as assumption-based.
- Send to Value Proposition Canvas: makes the persona the canvas segment. Its jobs, frustrations and goals become canvas jobs, pains and gains.
10. Value Proposition Canvas
Based on the canvas in Value Proposition Design (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda & Smith, 2014). The canvas has two sides.
Customer profile (circle) describes one segment:
| Block | Rated by | Types |
|---|---|---|
| 🧰 Jobs | importance | functional · social · emotional · supporting |
| 😣 Pains | severity | undesired outcome · obstacle · risk |
| 🌟 Gains | relevance | required · expected · desired · unexpected |
Value map (square) describes your offer:
- products & services
- pain relievers, each linked to the pains it addresses
- gain creators, each linked to the gains it produces
Fit = the share of total pain-severity and gain-relevance weight that your relievers and creators address. Unaddressed items show in red on the canvas and the fit matrix. Click matrix cells to link or unlink.
| Fit | Suggested Value proposition score |
|---|---|
| ≥ 80% | 5 |
| ≥ 60% | 4 |
| ≥ 40% | 3 |
| ≥ 20% | 2 |
| below 20% | 1 |
The canvas tab also warns about:
- relievers or creators linked to nothing
- only functional jobs listed
- extreme pains left unrelieved
- more than 10 relievers and creators combined (trying to do too much)
Extra tools on the same tab:
- Ad-lib statements: "Our ___ help ___ who want to ___ by ___ and ___ (unlike ___)". These are pre-filled from your top-ranked items. Star the best one and use it as the idea's pitch.
- 10 characteristics of a great value proposition: a self-check out of 10.
- Path to fit: problem–solution → product–market → business-model fit, with your evidence for each.
- Test cards:
- Each card has four parts: we believe… / to verify, we will… / and measure… / we are right if…
- Each card has a status and a "what we learned" field.
- Cards can be suggested from the biggest gaps in your canvas.
11. Business Model Canvas
The nine building blocks from Business Model Generation (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010), laid out in the classic grid:
| Left: efficiency | Centre | Right: value |
|---|---|---|
| 🤝 Key partners · ⚙️ Key activities · 🧱 Key resources · 💸 Cost structure | 🎁 Value propositions | 💬 Customer relationships · 📣 Channels · 👥 Customer segments · 💰 Revenue streams |
Sticky notes:
- Add notes to any block and colour-code them. A good habit is one colour per customer segment.
- Notes start as dashed assumptions. Mark them ✓ validated once you have evidence. The tab tracks the % validated.
- Revenue and cost notes take a type (subscription, usage, commission… or fixed and variable) and a monthly amount. The tab then shows revenue against costs, profit or loss, margin, and fixed costs.
✨ Pre-fill from other tabs imports, without duplicates:
- personas → customer segments
- your starred value proposition sentence → value propositions
- persona channels → channels
- canvas products → key resources
- the TAM price → revenue streams
Warnings flag:
- empty blocks
- several segments sharing a single value proposition
- a model that is mostly untested assumptions
- costs higher than revenue
12. Offer builder (phase 3)
Based on the method in Alex Hormozi's $100M Offers (2021). Everything is paraphrased.
-
Starving crowd. Rate the market 1–10 on four indicators (/40):
- massive pain
- purchasing power
- easy to target
- growing
Pick a core market (health, wealth or relationships) and niche down. Enter your price against competitors' prices. The point is to charge what it's worth, not to compete on price.
-
Value equation. Value = (dream outcome × perceived likelihood) ÷ (time delay × effort & sacrifice).
- Rate each driver 1–10. The score is shown on a 0–10 log scale.
- The tool names your biggest lever and gives a tip for improving it.
-
Problems → solutions.
- List every obstacle before, during and after the purchase. Import them from your canvas pains and persona frustrations.
- Tag each with the doubt it represents: not worth it, won't work for me, takes too long, too hard.
- Flip each into a "How to…" solution. ✨ suggests a first draft.
-
Delivery vehicles.
- For each solution, brainstorm ways to deliver it, varying three things:
- personal attention: 1-on-1, small group, one-to-many
- customer effort: DIY, done with you, done for you
- medium
- Cheat codes include the 10× and 1/10th price tests.
- For each solution, brainstorm ways to deliver it, varying three things:
-
Trim & stack.
- Rate every delivery idea on value to the customer and cost to you. A matrix sorts them into keep / keep if profitable / optional / cut.
- Give the kept items a perceived worth and stack them. The tool shows total value against price, aiming for at least 10×.
-
Enhance.
- Scarcity: limited seats, limited bonuses, or a never-again offer.
- Urgency: rolling cohorts, seasonal promotions, price or bonus deadlines, or an exploding opportunity.
- Bonuses: each one should kill a specific doubt. Tools beat training. Bonus value should exceed the core.
- Guarantee: unconditional, conditional, anti-guarantee or implied, written as "if X, we will Y", with a vivid name.
- MAGIC name: Magnetic reason why · Avatar · Goal · Interval · Container word.
-
Your offer. A one-page offer and a 12-point strength checklist. Each open item has a "fix →" link to the right step. Copy the offer as plain text for a sales page or DM.
| Checks passed | Label |
|---|---|
| 11–12 | Grand Slam Offer 🏆 |
| 8–10 | Strong offer |
| 5–7 | Decent offer |
| 0–4 | Commodity offer |
13. Report tab
The Report tab shows every result full-width with large charts: both radars, persona cards, the Value Proposition Canvas, the Business Model Canvas, the offer one-pager, the Five Forces diagram, the 3C diagram, the market chart, red flags and next tests. Use Print / PDF from that tab for a one-document summary.
14. Privacy, saving and sharing
- Everything is stored only in your browser (localStorage). There is no server, account or tracking. The only exception is when you click Save to Google Drive, which sends the idea from your browser to your own Drive.
- Share link: the whole idea is packed into the link itself (after the
#). Whoever opens it gets their own copy. - Backup JSON saves all your ideas to a file. Import JSON restores them on any device.
- ☁️ Save to Google Drive signs you in with Google and writes the idea to an Idea Evaluator folder in your Drive: a Google Doc with the full report and a
.jsonbackup you can import later. Saving again updates the same files. The app can only see files it created there. - Print / PDF prints a clean report. Markdown export works well for Notion, GitHub or docs.